I used white and grey cards for years but was never that happy with them on my PMW-EX3. I purchased at set of Vortex Warm Cards (from a UK dealer) and absolutely love them.

The big cards are great for interviews but as Steve mentions, the pocket sized ones are great for constant resetting.

The thing I noticed the most about using these cards is the consistency I have with my footage. I rarely need to colour correct anymore.

Highly recommended!

Do I spot a particular trend here?

Three fans of warm cards, all hailing from the UK where the sky is routinely overcast so it's like filming inside a large tupperware sandwich box.

Anything - ANYTHING to drop a little Mediterranean sunshine in our voxpops, a little warmth, a little golden something-or-other.

Perhaps warm cards are at their best in Blighty?

Just unwrapped the WarmCards and stuffed them straight in the camera bag. The round-the-neck set - I guess you carry the camera over to the shot area and hold the card at strap length in front of the lens? No doubt I'll get over the inevitable self conscious feeling of wandering around with the cards hanging round my neck.

I'm totally with you on this, Brian, and think you make the best point here: "You can not duplicate what these warm cards do in post."

I'd like a bit more clarification on this. The basic physics of this make the statement seem less than accurate. You have a LOT more control of color in post, though with the small cameras it is after compression rather than before.

There is no "white balance" on a film camera and other than doing filters to balance for daylight or tungsten, I am not aware of a lot of cinematographers doing subtle coloring with filters either. It's left for post.

So what exactly are the warm cards doing that cannot be done in post?

I'd like a bit more clarification on this. The basic physics of this make the statement seem less than accurate.

PMJI...

Filtration always means taking something away from what's coming in.

You can filter out light at the input stage (before the lens with a matte box). You can filter out signals at the pre-compression image processing stage (at the white balance/Picture Profile stage), or you can filter out signals at the compression stage (to minimise aliasing) or so on, until you get to your edited sequence which you send to Color (or whatever).

A well placed grad on the camera will preserve details that - had it not been there - would never be even SEEN by Color because they'd have been off the sensor's scale in-camera.

A well-white-balanced camera will ensure a proper spread of colours that can be enhanced and tweaked at post, but as we've seen with the EX1's oversensitivity to red, this can be skewed by the camera's own idiosyncrasies.

By using warmcards - or rather more crucially by white balancing using proper white sources (be they ever so maybe skewed towards warm), rather than fixing it in post, I've seen better rendition of overall colour because they were there to start with, not having to be amplified up from below the noise floor.

Don't get me wrong - I'd eschew a promist for Magic Bullet Looks any day, but to get a good balance of colours onto the sensor may require some filtration, and to get the best balance of what the sensors can do to allow the more limited codec to do its job well may require some more finesse in setting their levels correctly - which means using a white card, or maybe Warm cards.

Because if you don't, you're amplifiying low level signals or pushing down high or even clipped signals to compensate, and therein lies noise, clipping, incorrect gamma,

And quite frankly if you're up against the clock to get the edit out and the pictures have to look nice (whether it's budget or deadline), warm card shots are quicker to render than colour correctors!

Do I spot a particular trend here?

Three fans of warm cards, all hailing from the UK where the sky is routinely overcast so it's like filming inside a large tupperware sandwich box.

Anything - ANYTHING to drop a little Mediterranean sunshine in our voxpops, a little warmth, a little golden something-or-other.

Perhaps warm cards are at their best in Blighty?

Just unwrapped the WarmCards and stuffed them straight in the camera bag. The round-the-neck set - I guess you carry the camera over to the shot area and hold the card at strap length in front of the lens? No doubt I'll get over the inevitable self conscious feeling of wandering around with the cards hanging round my neck.

LOL :) I shot with mine in Corfu for three weeks, does that count :) The sky isn't routinely overcast in the Isle of Man, it's often sunny with cotton wool clouds, but your sending all your bad weather our way lately Heh!

Please don't think I am being argumentative here, I am just trying to wrap my head around the issues.

If the camera is over senstive to red then white balancing on a "normal" white card would tend to skew colors slightly toward red. This makes sense, and using a card that is slightly more cyan should recenter that.

I don't tend to record with such saturation in the camera so that ANY color would be off the scale, but I can understand this might be an issue for those who try to get as much color in the camera as possible when shooting.

Are the warm cards you guys are buying specific to the sensor issues of the EX1? It would seem that a card that is specific to the EX1 would be awesome in providing a good white balance, but one that is not, might solve one issue while creating another. Reigning in the oversenstivity to red, while perhaps shifting the spectrum too far in another direction.

If you are against the clock, I totally agree that doing something in the field to help correct makes great sense. I was just trying to get a feel why someone would want to "color" the image in the field with what seems a rather crude tool, rather than handling things in post. I could understand maybe shooting a chroma du monde chart which would certainly allow for accurate correction on every axis, but the warm cards just seemed strange to me.

Thank you for trying to clarify for me.

If the camera is over senstive to red then white balancing on a "normal" white card would tend to skew colors slightly toward red. This makes sense, and using a card that is slightly more cyan should recenter that.

Actually, it's even more skewed than you think. An EX1 is oversensitive to the last shreds of red (thanks to Mr Adams and Mr Wilt et al for such in-depth proof of this). So one may think the last thing you want to do is show a blue card to an EX1 and say 'Here, boy! This is WHITE!' so it can cancel out the last few drips of blue to compensate. But it doesn't quite work out like that. In fact, I hardly ever used the Warm cards and relied on the white card of my DSC. But that, especially in difficult and mixed lighting setups, was a crucial difference.

I can understand this might be an issue for those who try to get as much color in the camera as possible when shooting.

Indeed. The awful truth is that, when great sound, nice composition and popular content are done, the people who watch television and web videos like sharp, colourful images. You can play with film looks, Skintone over Teal, Bleach Bypass and the rest all you like, but if you want joy-joy happy feelings in the brains of viewers, make it colourful, make it sharp. Think Fisher Price. But the nurse says I must rest now...

Are the warm cards you guys are buying specific to the sensor issues of the EX1?

Speaking for myself? NO. Absolutely not. Used them with DSR570, Z1, even risked life and limb by offering them to the DoPs I worked with (with the defence that I was an Editor who directs, and DOES NOT want to fix things in post). Time and again, I've seen shots benefit from a white set from a proper white source, and miss the point with a bit of paper from the PA's clipboard or the ceiling of the room we're in.

I was just trying to get a feel why someone would want to "color" the image in the field with what seems a rather crude tool, rather than handling things in post.

Just think of it as being a dab of foundation or a slight wash of amber, not an in-camera effect. I'd not go much further than the 1/4 or 1/2 Warm card in the Vortex shoot.

If I sound all kind of hot and bothered about this, it's only because I've been playing with my new Vortex cards and will probably upload my test movie to YouTube imminently. But even the test movie is just seeing what happens with the cards, so it's not exactly destined for PVC...

Okay folks, here you go:

YouTube - Warm Cards - a very unscientific test (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRGIHLd3OOE)

And for the record, this is not a major scientific test, just the results of my mucking around this afternoon. Not one iota of tweaking was done to either the editing nor the compression, it's all White Balance and just a smidgen of iris.

I don't get all the raving about these cards - pro or con. Its a nice idea fine if you want to buy them, but so what? Didn't any of you guys cheat your balance using gels before discovering warm cards? Its an idea as old as video.

Could one of the many apostles for warm cards here please tell me what you can accomplish with a $100 cumbersome container of cards that I can't with a free 2" swatchbook containing blue and green fractional gels in my pocket so they are available all the time. One that gives me more choices for mixing green and blue ( which I almost always do) and even allows me to go in the other direction on rare occasions. ( I've cheated my color using CTO's and magentas and even theatricals to get unusual effects.) It also allows me to use any white I can find in a fast and dirty situation and make it work even if its a little off.

The only difference is a controllable white but that's not too big an issue in my experience ( paper seems to work just fine) and if you were concerned about it you could just always carry the same single white card.

I've been shooting for 25 years. I've never seen a warm card on a shoot, but everyone I know has a swatchbook or a jungle book in his pocket.

To continue the the rant: What is the name of %#&)@ is the argument here about warming your color balance about? I'll eat my shoe and buy dinner for anyone who can show me that I've compromised my noise by adding 1/4 blue to the white balance or who can tell the difference between doing it in post or in the camera with warm cards, gels, a paint box or a cheap tin of children's water colors. Whatever way works for you. If you care that much you shouldn't be using an EX-1.

Chances are your monitor is off anyway - as well as every other monitor you might find including the so called color critical one at the post facility that doesn't match any other monitor the show will ever be seen on!

Sorry I'll go back on my meds now.

I don't get all the raving about these cards - pro or con. Its a nice idea fine if you want to buy them, but so what?... Sorry I'll go back on my meds now.

Leonard - no worries here mate! But let's bend it in a slightly different direction: white set in general.

What would give the best results: a scrap of cheap photocopying paper held on a dark clipboard, a bit of white clothing, or a card made and tested to carefully controlled standards (...and sold at a robust and healthy premium admittedly)?

If colours are poorly represented in the first instance (dim), and we colour correct in post, are we i) amplifying a low quality signal, or ii) calling upon the 'spirit of exposure' to create new information out of thin air from deep within our edit suite?

Whether one uses the warms or not, I'd still happily champion the use of a decent CamWhite or white set card - kinda like the old days of shooting in studios?

Matt - The offer stands. I'll eat my shoe if you can show me a noticeable difference and anyone who has shot with me can tell you I care very much about color balance and getting a good look in the camera.

On a high priced shoot I have an engineer, a pricey camera , a paint box, and an expensive chip chart if not a Chroma DuMonde on the set. That's control. Nevertheless it still usually needs correction in post when placed in context with other shots and frankly isn't usually a world apart from what I could do with a swatchbook and a piece of paper.

I have no objection to warm cards, and I'm sure they work for many people, but I do not get either the huge amount of controversy and or the outsized accolades they've generated here.

This is going to turn into one of those nights debating Astroturf, I can tell.

But before it goes that far, I chopped this out. It's not exactly Cambelles, and it wasn't going to be used as any form of rigourous test, but it sure does show the benefit of a decent white set on a good white card.

No, it won't have you reaching for the ketchup and putting your shoe in the oven yet, but there is more red in the upper portion, the orange berries on the right have more detail, the sky is far more neutral, yada yada yada. The information that's in the top half cannot be in the bottom half as it's a balanced attenuation (Okay, looked at immediately after the previous 'ATW' shot, it looks warm - but this is the neutral card, but I digress).

And here's the Astroturf moment: I'm arguing for white cards over scraps of paper at the moment.

In my opinion, there are several reasons why using WarmCards is better than adjusting the Picture Profile, using gels, grading in post, or other methods of warming the picture.

First, WarmCards save time. To set a proper white balance on a typical ENG/EFP shoot, you MUST manually white balance the camera at the location where you’re shooting. If you only use a plain white card, then you also have to take the time to manually adjust the PP to warm-up or cool-down the image. But, with WarmCards, all you have to do is aim the camera at the card, press the WB button, and you’re ready to shoot immediately.

What if you are a freelancer and won’t edit the footage, and can’t trust the client to see your “vision” of how you think your footage should be graded? Most of us are not working on big-budget productions where we can sit in on the post and offer suggestions for grading. Most freelancers hand off the footage at the end of the shoot and never see it again. I prefer to have my footage as close to perfect as I can get it – when I shoot it.

Second, WarmCards are designed to do more than just boost the overall Kelvin temperature. The four shades of WarmCards were chosen to emphasize the hues that make skin tones look best. Think of it this way: Using the Picture Profile menu to crudely make the whole picture warmer is like only having a Bass or Treble knob on an audio system. On the other hand, using WarmCards is like applying a pre-set Equalizer setting across the whole spectrum of colors. In most instances, especially when shooting interviews, the effect you get from WarmCards is noticeably more pleasing than just cranking up the color temperature.

Third, there’s no guess work involved. The effect that WarmCards provide is predictable, repeatable, and consistent. Once you’ve experimented with WarmCards and see the effect they have, you’ll have no qualms about using WarmCards without even checking a monitor. Two crews in two locations can add the same amount of warmth to their shots by using the same grade of WarmCard. That’s not so easy to do with gels or adjusting camera menus.

Fourth, with WarmCards there’s no labor-intensive color correcting footage in post or waiting for time-consuming rendering to finish. And what if you have to give (or show) the raw footage to a client? Can you count on them to process the footage so it looks the way you intended it? Some people may enjoy color grading every shot. But a lot of us don’t have the time or any interest in color grading unnecessarily. I don’t care how fast your edit system is, not rendering is always going to be faster than rendering.

Fifth, WarmCards includes a Minus Green card for getting a cleaner white balance under common fluorescent lighting. There’s no easy way to do that by changing the Picture Profile.

Sixth, have you ever tried to white balance through a gel while the camera is on your shoulder? With WarmCards you just lay the card down or have someone hold it, zoom in, and press the WB button. Gels are not that easy.

Seventh, if you decide to use the WB Offset feature of the camera to warm-up the white balance 100% of the time , that doesn’t allow you much control on a shot-by-shot basis. And if you forget that WB Offset is activated, you may shoot video with a white balance you didn’t intend.

WarmCards aren’t for everyone, and the look can be achieved many different ways, but when you compare the cost, consistency, and time saved by using WarmCards, it is well worth the $90 investment.

If you want more information about WarmCards, there’s plenty more details on Vortex Media’s website.http://www.vortexmedia.com/WC1.html

This may not add much to the discsussion, but I'll admit up front that I've drunk the kool-aid. I bought a set of the Vortex Warm Cards recently and I wouldn't shoot without them for all the reasons that Doug outlines. I've been doing video for over 30 years and most of it, event style and run and gun shooting where I had precious little time to do a proper white balance and often shot in available light, often a mix of sources.

For my type of shooting, being able to get warm skin tones in all conditions has been a god-send. I really appreciate that I can get a consistent look in all the conditions I shoot in and quickly at that.

OK this is my last attempt at being a spoiler.

I can see that it might make a production feel more confident if they didn't know their shooters in different towns and couldn't guarantee they had a swatchbook. Gels fade over time I guess as well though I still think its just not all that precise at best.

In my experience no 2 cameras actually balance exactly the same or even no one camera balances the same under different kinds of light. Point 2 EX-1's or any camera at the same card and I often need to add a swatchbook correction to one camera to get them closer, so I don't think any specific card is going to guarantee perfect matches any better than a gel would. In mixed light the angle is critical as well.

Re: gels while handheld - its a a bit of a juggling act , but its not very hard and it is fast, can be accomplished with a piece of paper and gel book in my pocket or often a piece of paper on a desk while running around doing B roll. This is how most people work.

I do have a question though. I tried to see if there are warm cards that mix green and blue correction, but didn't see any description on the web site of what the 8 cards were. I often switch between different proportions of 1/8 to even 1/2 CTB and the same in green. That's a lot of cards.

I'll leave this discussion as before. They sound just fine if you like them, and there is no reason not to buy and use them. I wouldn't mind having a set, but its not the second coming and they didn't invent cheating a color balance.

Bye bye

Leonard,

I agree, they're not the second coming and Vortex Media didn't invent the concept of cheating the white balance -- just as Mac didn't invent the computer and Sony didn't invent the camera. There's more than one way to skin a cat, and clearly WarmCards have a few advantages over other methods.

You're also correct that no two cameras are going to match perfectly no matter what you white balance on, but WarmCards can get them dang close. I can point to several instances where we've had people with the same camera, the same scene file, and the same designated WarmCard shoot nearly matching footage in different cities. I'd rather grade a 1% difference than 5% or 10%.

However, I disagree that most people white balance through a gel to cheat the color balance. Maybe in the past, but not for the last 8 years. I'm sure some people still do it that way, but I haven't seen anyone use a swatch since 2005. Believe or not, WarmCards are the "norm" on most ENG/EFP productions (including NFL Films, 60 Minutes, 20/20, Frontline, etc). We'll have to agree to disagree on that point.

To answer your questions about a Green/Warm combo card, there isn't one of those.

PS. You're not a spoiler. It's always good to hear other opinions and ideas.

I think one really has to look at what is going to be happening in front of the camera to make a decision on whether or not this is a good way to go.

While I agree that consistency is important, I can be consistent on the white card I use when I shoot. I am not multi-camming, so that's not really a consideration.

In the "narrative" work I've shot, the grade usually doesn't tend toward warm, so a set of warming cards would actually be counterproductive. If I was shooting interviews then I could see it as helpful. In a lot of my shoots, I am more interested in accurate color rendition more so that "pleasing" color rendition, and again the warm cards would be counterproductive.

I can certainly see their use for those for whom the footage out of the camera is the footage that is going to be displayed. I guess having the luxury on nearly everything I shoot to grade to my heart's desire has somewhat spoiled me.

Doug - well my suggestion is to make some cards mixing green and blue. I almost always do that and so do most of my friends. Would have no use for the cards otherwise. The most typical pack being 1/4 B + 1/8 G. Usually I find Blue alone a touch too yellow.

Thanks for the suggestion. I'll see what we can do about it next year.

Thanks Doug.

Lest I sound too negative - they are a good idea and have no doubt help a great many people - especially those who never thought of cheating white balance beforehand.

Didn't any of you guys cheat your balance using gels before discovering warm cards? Its an idea as old as video.

(Blushing sheepishly.) Uh, being new to video... What is a swatchbook, where do you get the free one, and how do you use it in this context?

A swatchbook is a small collection of sample lighting gels used for lights in film, video and/or theatrical productions. Most are just 1" by 2 1/2 or so but some manufacturers make them larger - about 2" square. They are made by Lee, Rosco, cinegel etc and are usually available free from a video lighting supply shop.

Among the samples are all the fractional CTO's CTB's and green and magenta gels as well as dozens of other theatrical and diffusion material. The book is held together with a single pin so you can rotate one or more gels out to look at. The size is just enough to cover a lens when shooting a white card, so if you want a 1/4 Blue for warming, you just pull it out- hold over the lens and aim at a white card. If you think you need a touch more magenta then add a 1/8 green etc. You can dial in exactly what you want while looking at a monitor, or if you know your camera, always use a certain combination. Stays in my pocket or a fanny pack all the time. They get messy after a while but are free to replace.

Unfortunately Rosco stopped making their best one called a "Jungle Book" which only had the commonly used correction colors. "Jungle book" became a generic name like Kleenex. Nowadays you need to get a much thicker book that has dozens of theatrical gels as well. Rosco should have kept making them and sold them at a decent price because every cameraman I know cried when they disappeared. I carry a Lee book around now.
If you get one though make sure it has the fractional CTO's etc. If its only for theatrical gels it won't have those. I don't know if you can get them on the web.

If you can't get one then I would actually suggest getting warm cards for sure as the next best thing unless you made your own swatchbook from gels.

Actually Doug if I you made a good quality swatchbook for a reasonable price I'd buy that rather than carry the full Lee inventory around with me. You could sell alot of them.

OK, thank you very much! Now I see what you are talking about. I just did not realize it was called a swatchbook (English is not my native tongue, even though I live in the US). So, you place it in front of the lens before white balancing and remove it after. I'll have to get one of those (I live in the boonies, but will ask the director of our local community theatre where I could get one). I agree it would offer much more flexibility since it would allow going for a more creative look.

I can see advantages of both approaches, the warm cards for most situations, the gels for special looks.

Recently I saw a TV commercial for some drug, I think against Alzheimer's, and they used a very cold look for before the drug and a warm one for after. I figured most viewers never realized it on the conscious level, but it seemed quite effective on the unconscious level for anyone dealing with the disease in their family.

My reason for purchasing the set of warm cards was:

1. Very easy to use
2. Convenient and consistent
3. Robust and easy to clean
4. They come in two sizes
5. Readily available
6. They work
7. Saves time CC in post
8. Not badly priced (when you think of the number of cards in the pack)

Several years ago I had a conversation with the owner of DSC Labs. He differentiated his product as being superior because he took the inverse color of the average caucasion skin tone as seen on a vectorscope and plotted the cards blue tone from that value. He then noted that the values are true values, ie, 1/4 is 1/4,. If you note there is a difference in the blue tones and the saturation of the competitors cards.

Hey Perrone, I may be mis-reading your post, but I have the set of WarmCards and they aren't all just for "warm" tones. There's a neutral "white" card and also yellow cards that will cool a scene too to varying degrees, as well as some other colors to change up the look. I use mostly the white and warm cards for my style of shooting, but you could get an icy blue from these cards as well. You probably knew this but I just wanted to make it clear in case someone new might be thinking they're 'only' warming cards.

As for me, these cards are the best thing I invested in for the resulting look of my footage. In my opinion having pleasant warm tones does more to take out the 'video' look than anything else, including shooting 24p.

Thanks for the update Buck. No, I did not know the warm card set included cool as well. I'm sure that's handy. Unlike most people, I tend to shoot a VERY flat image with my camera (akin to film) because I do most of my color in post. I realize that most people don't do that kind of workflow.

Maybe I'll do an A/B comparison of what a standard settting looks like (picture profile off) and my normal shooting profile.

I purchased a set of warm cards a while ago and have been using them since Day 1 with the EX1. The only one I'll use in "normal" light is the 1/4 warm, the lightest blue card in the deck. Even then, it tends to really warm up the image on the EX1 such that I end up backing some of it back out in post. I'm not sure that's not a bi-product of the "red-heavy" EX1 that I've read about in these forums.

As of this point, I use the white-balance card with the Warm Card set almost exclusively as, like Perrone, I end up doing some amount of color correction in post anyway, and can add the warmth back in if I want it.

On projects I need to get out the door quickly with minimal post work, like weddings, I always balance on the 1/4 warm.

For anything else like commercials & music videos I use the white side of the Vortex cards.

Ditto here too on the 1/4 Warm Card. There are times where I'll go higher (some indoor lighting situations requiring better skin tones), but with natural light (not a reference to beer) the 1/4 Warm is my go-to card. If I'm shooting a project with other cameras we'll usually balance on the 'white' card.

Seventh, if you decide to use the WB Offset feature of the camera to warm-up the white balance 100% of the time , that doesn’t allow you much control on a shot-by-shot basis. And if you forget that WB Offset is activated, you may shoot video with a white balance you didn’t intend.

WarmCards aren’t for everyone, and the look can be achieved many different ways, but when you compare the cost, consistency, and time saved by using WarmCards, it is well worth the $90 investment.

If you want more information about WarmCards, there’s plenty more details on Vortex Media’s website.WarmCards - White Balance Reference System (http://www.vortexmedia.com/WC1.html)

Eighth, If you shoot underwater videography you can get the WarmCards wet (even in salt water!) and not have to worry about ruining them. Try that with a piece of paper or swatchbook.

For the matter, you can spill stuff/crud gets on the warm cards you just wipe them clean. Good times!

They are very durable. Plus you can get the 1/4 warm by itself on B&H for $17. I don't use any of the other cards so it's perfect for me whenever I lose one.

They're only doing that because back in the day the kit only went down to 1/2 warm and when they came out with the 1/4, the people with the original set, like myself, wanted to upgrade. Point is, they may not do this forever so stock up!